The 162-game grind of the MLB regular season is finally over. The stakes will be at their highest in the playoffs, where teams could ill-afford to slip up in a short series that will dictate the fate of their season. Thus, Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash knows that it's go time for the franchise that's still in search of its first taste of World Series glory.
However, the Rays enter their series against the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Wild Card round losers of eight of their last 10 games. Cash just has one plea for his struggling players as they square off against the AL Central champions: to stop sucking.
“I just told (the players) we can stop sucking, now let’s find ways to win games,” Cash said, per the Tampa Bay Times.
Ah, if only it was that easy, Kevin Cash. Alas, no professional athlete intends to perform on a below-average level, let alone a group of players, specifically the Rays hitters. In particular, Randy Arozarena has struggled in his previous thirty at-bats, hitting an ice-cold 2-30 (.067 batting average).
Nevertheless, the Rays still boast the services of two of the most difficult to hit pitchers in the entire league. Shane McClanahan, who's drawn consideration for the AL Cy Young award, will start Game 1 of their series against the Guardians, while Tyler Glasnow, in spite of injury woes that limited him to just two starts this season, will start Game 2, giving Tampa Bay as good a chance as any to steal the series.
Still, it's difficult to win a game predicated on scoring without any form of run production. The Rays have mustered a mere eight runs in their past five games, and they struggled to score against the Guardians in two of their last three matchups.
Rays fans will hope that Kevin Cash's impassioned talk lit a fire under his players so they could snatch a series that appears to favor the Guardians, a team that's been better than the Rays in all of the key strengths in their roster: defense, pitching, and clutch hitting.
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